Hugo Duncan: The popular presenter on his recent MBE, losing more than four stone due to ill health, and the records he'd bring to a desert island

One of Northern Ireland's most popular broadcasters and a true aficionado of country music, the ‘wee man from Strabane’ with the big personality, said he “never in his wildest dreams” expected to get an MBE, just as he never thought he’d be added to the prestigious IMRO Radio Awards Hall of Fame 2024.

“I never cast myself as a radio presenter. I cast myself as a singer playing records, so it (the MBE) was a big shock.”

However, the presenter and performer admits he did consider what others would think.

“I wasn't in two minds about accepting it, I was in two minds about how people were going to accept me. I live in a border town and you have to take everything into consideration. I know this award is from the palace, but it's not a political thing for me. It's for my music and my mother. Music is my life. But the main reason I took it was, if I went back 75 years from today, my mother was walking round Strabane on a winter’s day pregnant. Her mother and father were dead. Her brother was dead. She was 39 years of age and carrying me. I took it for her because she came through a hard time. She would have been called many a name and they wouldn't have been good. I got the same growing up. The 50s was a hard time to rear a child on your own.”

Sadly, his mother died just two weeks after he married Joan, whom he had met when they both worked in a nylon factory together in Strabane, on April 2, 1970.

“I was very lucky I got married, because I had nobody. I had great neighbours, but neighbours are neighbours. Joan was there for me and she stood by me. I do regret that I never sat down and talked to my mother about her situation. And then it was too late. She died when she was 59,” he says, his voice breaking with emotion.

Growing up, music was always a factor in Hugo’s life. At the age of nine he played Buttons in Cinderella at a panto in Strabane, and at 13 began singing pubs around the town.

A year after he married Joan he began playing with a band, Hugo Duncan and the Tall Men. At five foot, five inches, Hugo was certainly not one of the tall men, but the band reached great heights in the Irish charts with their number one hit, Dear God.

He started out in radio after being offered a slot at a pirate station based in Donegal, then moved to Radio Foyle during the 1980s.

"I got a show with Radio Ulster, initially on a Saturday night, and I began to say during a wee teaser ‘Now we’ll play a song for the children before they go to bed, so phone in and tell your Uncle Hugo what you would like to hear played.”

The moniker stuck and so did his presence on the airwaves when he was offered his own presenting job at Radio Ulster in October 1998. And the rest, as they say, is history.

His lively shows that are shot through with banter, birthday wishes and call outs to people who might request a particular country classic. Cream buns are also a favourite topic of conversation.

"I have a sweet tooth. I love snowballs with a big slap of butter in the middle.

"We used to get to our outside broadcasts, and there would be trays and trays of cream buns. We used to go around nursing homes and different places leaving them in, because we couldn't eat them all."

His slimmer appearance (he’s lost four and a half stone in the last three years) wasn’t due to cutting back on the buns, but rather a health complaint.

"I didn't try (to lose weight). I went from a 44in waist down to a 34in. I was getting cameras up and cameras down and cameras here and cameras there. I was very sickly looking, but I never felt physically bad. It turned out to be a blood disorder. Thank God everything was fine, but it was a frightening time for me.”

However, a consummate professional, Hugo remained his effervescent self on air, despite the personal challenges.

“I think there's nobody comes through this life without getting a hard time and I think until you have a hard time you don't realise what the good times are.

"I go on and enjoy myself. I want to make one person smile every day. I played a wee song today, The Red River Valley, just because I know there's a lot of people tuning into me from residential homes.

"I always say there's two things I want to do. I want to either make you laugh or annoy you. Because either way I'm taking your mind off your troubles.”

Having had his own health struggles and watched his only daughter Suzanne and son-in-law John come through cancer, what comes across is Hugo’s sense of empathy and strong faith, although he insists he “doesn’t preach”. “I wouldn't go into a conversation and change it to religion. I go to church and there’s a community aspect of it. Some days I might even say a prayer!”

He speaks candidly about his battle with alcoholism as a young man (he hasn’t had a drink since December 28, 1983) and credits wife Joan as being his constant.

"Joan has stood by me through thick and thin. I know the drink days weren't good. If you've gone through it, or you're going through it, the only people you hurt is yourself and your family. There are good people out there (to help). Just ask. I came through a lot of things. I came through bankruptcy, my daughter’s cancer, but I found that my lift, my blood transfusion, my injection, was music.”

If he was stuck on a desert island, Hugo would like to bring three records, the Isle of Innisfree (from the Quiet Man), his own record, Dear God, and the other, a song by Tom T. Hall.

"I had the luck and the privilege of meeting in Nashville. He had a song called Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine. There's one line in that song that really attracted me to it ‘God bless little children while they're still too young to hate’.”

Country music has become more mainstream in recent times, and this purveyor of the genre admits he’s not so keen on certain aspects of ‘newer’ country. “The thing I don't like about young country music in America at the moment is that they all sound the same. The old legends of country music, everybody had an individual voice, and nobody was copying anybody. And in the Irish showbiz scene too. Whenever you heard Brian Coll singing, or Philomena Begley, you knew who it was right away. Most of the singers we have coming out nowadays are changing their voices to Americans. There's no point in it. Be yourself.”

With a career spanning decades does the wee man from Strabane have any unfulfilled ambitions? I would love to have been down in Tralee, singing to the Roses of Tralee. And maybe to have represented the country in Eurovision. But I've been very blessed. God's been good to me. I have four grandchildren, and they mean everything to me.”

A self-confessed ‘homebird’ (in 55 years of marriage he and June have never been on a plane together), he loves Strabane and has no intention of ever leaving. He wants to be buried beside his mother and wants a microphone in his coffin.

“On the radio I’m on the microphone and on stage I’m on the microphone too, so I would love that!’’

​​​​​*Hugo Duncan is on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio Ulster, Monday to Friday from 1.30-3pm.

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